interesting to see what boehner is going to do on the extension of unemployment and it fits. we are in an election year so both parties have gone into campaign mode and we will see that morrissey or the sun. >> you can find bob cusack's work at dell.com and on twitter at bob cusack. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. ..

>> welcome to the event. i am jonathan yardley the book critic of the "washington post." the "washington post" has been a charter sponsor of the national book festival since the inception 13 years ago. they play an active role in many of the planning and promotion. i am instructed to remind you this presentation is being taped. and you should stay off the camera rises in the back of the

pavilion. at the national book event, the final day of the one-day festival was a presentation by scott berg about this book about charles wilson. he is back now. he was promoting his book of maxwell perkins. we have had a great friendship every since. he is the author of many books and now this biography of

woodrow wilson. he has placed great emphasis on a man whose personal life was interesting and important. scott? [ applause ] >> thank you very much for being here this afternoon. thank you jonathan. that was a very welcoming welcome coming from someone i considering being one of the greatest writer critics in the country. enough about him, though. [laugher] >> let's talk about me and woodrow wilson. i will tell you this much on a personal level about me. i have been interested in

woodrow wilson since i was 15 years old when i read a book about him and became entranced and have been reading about him since and went to princeton university in large measure because woodrow wilson went there. for the last 13 years i have been writing this book. i thought before i talked about wilson i would talk about two main principles that guide me in the writing of the book. and let me give you the two planks in my platform here. the first is, and i think i am in the most contenious city in the world so hold your tomatoes. but i believe woodrow wilson was the most influential president

of the 20th century. i don't think there has been a more dramatic personal live that has unfolded -- life -- in the whitehouse than woodrow wilson. and as jonathan suggested, what i tried to do in this book is integrate those two things. i think they belong to each other. i think woodrow wilson's personal life to some extent has to and does in form his professional life. -- inform -- and in the case of a president of the united states his profession affects the world. and he was the first president to effect the world profoundly.

let me run by you a few things since time is limited and i have a big book i only have time to give you the greatest hits. i thought if i through out a couple it would give you a greater sense of woodrow wilson or some takeaways this afternoon. the first thing you must remember, and this is personal life with what happened professionally, he was the first southerner elected since the civil war. he was born in 1856 in virginia. his very first memory, his father was a minister in virginia and they moved into three more state of what became the confederate states of

america. but when the wilson's were living in georgia, young tommy's first memory was when he was almost four years old and the election of 1860 took place and this little boy remembered hearing lincoln just got elected there is going to be a war. and wilson carried that with him all of his life. he carried memories of the war with him. growing up in augusta he was spared seeing the day-to-day horrors of the war. but anything in the south experienced that devastation. and wilson grew up after the civil war and during reconstruction he moved to south carolina and they saw charred cities. he took this memory of

devastation with him. this is going to have a deep effect later in wilson's life because he is going to be called upon to decide if the country would go into the a great world war and wilson resisted for years and then jumped in. but the reason for the great resistance was he remembered these boyhood images and the devastation, which was the world he used over and over, what happened to the south. as a result, woodrow wilson is the only american president who grow up in a country that had lost a war and that was the c confederate state. so a lot of that changed what the south was and who the

southerners were. and wilson said there is one place in the world no one needs to explain and that is the south. it was another place and it was another country. wilson's election was a great reintegration of the south with the union. woodrow wilson, here is another for you, he was the most educated president we have ever had. i hesitate to see he was the most intellectual but woodrow wilson attended what was then the college of new jersey in princeton. graduated in 1879. his aspirations then, he had political dreams then, his great aspiration was to become, as i

discovered going through this papers, because he made a little business card, a homemade business card that said thomas woodrow wilson, senator from virginia. and that was the dream then. and the way to achieve that was to become a lawyer because most presidents began their professional lives as lawyers. and senator from virginia because virginia sent more men to the whitehouse. he went to the virginia law school and studied law. he didn't like the study but moved to atlanta and opened a law office. he was a terrible lawyer. he obtained no clients in the year he was down there. he loved spending the afternoon

reading. he read a lot of history and he read what was becoming a new discipline and that was political science. he read a lot about economics, history and how they were melded into this new thing called political science. and after wilson realized he wasn't making a living as an attorney in atlanta he decided he was going to go to grad school. one good thing came from the atlanta years and that was the big piece of business he had acquired. and that was something his family gave him. wilson went to rome, georgia and tied up lose ends. where he met a women named ellen

lou axon. they fell in love and had a 19th century courtship. wilson was desperate to marry her realized he didn't have the resources to do it. their engagement went on for several years. and they exchanged thousands of love letters during that time. let me restate this, they exchanged thousands of love letters. this is one of the most romantic correspondences that has been put on paper. this is very occasionally rather hot stuff. and you start of think -- many

can picture woodrow wilson with the long face well. but the fact of the matter is he was this incredible, intensely passionate man and they come out in the letters. this is interesting knowing we are going to get a president who is this emotional and feels things this deeply. who is so unabashed that he can put any thought, any feeling down on paper. he knows how to articulate this inner self. this is rare among presidents. anyway, wilson upon getting engaged, goes up to johns h hopkins university. he is the first president to have a ph.d. he realized in

order to marry ellen he would have to make a living and chose academ academia. he felt he had no chance not having money he could get ahead in politics. so he began to support his family by becoming a college professor at brin mar college the day they opened the school. he was in the first cohort of professors with they opened to door the just women. he wasn't happy teaching just women. and even unhappier was mrs. wilson. she thought they were not worthy

of her husband. so a few years later he got another gig teaching history and political science at wesley college. and after another few year he got the call he was hoping for and that was a job offer from princeton. he returned to the school where he took the school by storm. rather as he had ad an undergraduate but he was the most dynamic presence on the campus and in the small town and increasingly in the state of new jersey. he becomes a public thinking, an intellectu intellectual, he writes books and lectures and he is travelling all over the country. he is becoming a famous thinker in the country. that is something because in

1902 he had proved himself to be so indispensable they made him president of the college. this was a real shock to this campus. a quite beautiful campus whose president before wilson descr e described it as the greatest country club in all of america. and wilson wanted to change that image. and he almost overnight began to reform what was being called princeton university. he introduced numerous educational reform, he changed education at princeton but affected higher education in this country. if you attended a college or know someone who went to a college in which you majored in something and there was a sequence of courses in the major and you took electives in which

you had a lecture in the class. that was the model he combine and it spread across the country. woodrow wilson i should say had the most mediocer rise of all. he was the president of the small men's college. james madison went to princeton in 1771. so it cut both ways for him. but here is the important thing.

october of 1910, woodrow wilson is still the president of the school in the middle of new jersey. it is a small college. if you can believe this, new jersey was the most corrupt state in the union in 1910 which had the most political machine in the union. the democratic machine i should add. and they thought we need a puppet. why don't we go to that squeaky clean professor? the president of princeton. he agreed to run on behalf of the machine. what they didn't realize is the first thing woodrow wilson would do after being elected in a landslide is kick out the

machine. he literally shut the doors and broadband the machine from showing up in the government buildings. and over the next 18 months he introduced the most progressive agenda of any state in the union and got it passed. this was stunning because this college professor has sharp political elbows. it was quite something. and now everybody in the country is turning to new jersey and thinking who is this guy. in 1912, the leader of the democratic party, having lost three elections, the party was in search for a new face and image, and who better than this squeaky clean governor of new

jersey. and october of 1910, woodrow wilson is president of a little country. november of 1912, woodrow wilson is elected president of the united states. the 28th president. this is where the roller coaster ride really begins. woodrow wilson comes in within the first two years and let's stretch it and call it his first term even, but within the first two years woodrow wilson passed the most progressive agenda the country had ever seen full stop. that is it. he immediately redid the economy of this country by lowering tariffs in a big way. this doesn't sound sexy but it was in favor of enhancing a graduating income tax which he thought was fairer way to go and

thought it was a way that would again level the playing field for most americans. he then created, presented and got passed something called the federal reserve system which to this day remains the bedrock of our economy. the eight hour workday, workman's compensation, put the first jew on the supreme court. every week and every month there was some new idea or wilson would say a new ideal that was going to be passed. something he was going to present. and this was the other almost magical thing that wilson did in his first few years in his first term of office and that is it he not only redefined the possibilities of a president. the executive powers that a president could have -- he being

a political science knowing the presidency was the least defined office in the constitution and his thinking was the president can do anything he wants until somebody tells him he can't and that somebody would be the congress or the supreme court. so he went in now, not only with sharp elbows, but arms swinging. the second thing, and this maybe the most important thing, it it has ringing to this year, he redefined how the president of the united states interacted with the congress. he had this crazy believe the executive and legislative branch should cooperate. and i mean that quite literally. he meant the two branches should

co-operate the government. and that meant, he thought, that the whitehouse, the presidency must be personalized and humanized. it meant he should make appearances not just in public but in the congress. and so wilson did something extraordinary that members of his own party resisted and that was he began showing up. he realized that a president had basically not set foot in the congress since adams left in 1801. no one, now we have this great institution of the state of the union address, that didn't exist for 112 years. until woodrow wilson decided i will come forth and i will present the state of the union and what i foresee the state of

the union. he did that every year so it became a washington institution. he thought in order to pass and emphasis its importance, i want to say to the congress how important it is and i will do it my voting with my feet. so wilson called 25 joint sessions of congress. once ever few months he would show up and give a speech and say this tariff address is important. this federal reserve system is important. this labor bill. whatever it was. wilson would show up and give a talk and then leave. it was extraordinary. then he did something even more extrao extraordinary. he would show up the next day

and sit in a little room in the capital. a room that has been unused since woodrow wilson as it had been unused before woodrow wilson. the room has a very complicated name. it is called the president's room. it is an idea george washington had for the building of a capital. there should be a small room that is possibly the most beautiful room. it is small, high ceiling, has a desk and a comfortable chair. the purpose was to have an office in which the president of the united states could come whenever he wanted and sit there to discuss the laws he wanted enacted. and wilson would come back 4-5

times a day and sit senators down and have discussions. he would run a classroom sometimes. the professor never leaving him you see. this part of his personal life influenced his professional life and he got these things passed. he had a new mode of governance. he did keep us out of wwi for a couple years. the war broke out in the summer of 1914 and he kept us out until 1917. reelection in 1916 on the slogan of he kept us out of war. but on april 2nd, 1917 wilson gave the speech to a joint section in congress. and there is one line that might be the most important foreign

policy speech ever given. our foreign policy to the president talking about the role in syria or not our role in syria, whether there should be a moral component to the foreign policy, all of this goes back, as does everything major policy decision, certainly one involving america and the world must be made safe for democracy. that has been adhered to. whether you love or hate would the that has become the

foundation of american foreign policy. as a result, the country underwent the greatest mobilization in history. and we, buffered by oceans on each side, were going to war suddenl suddenl suddenly;. a country with the size of the army of portugual was sending men overseas. american went to war and emerged as the first great modern super power. a military industrial complex for the first time. wilson's main reason and there

are all sorts of things and chapters in the book on this, but his main reason for sending us into war was he believed he could be part of the peace and we could dictate the peace. he came up with 14 points that described that peace. and the 14th of them was the most crucial. it was the creation of a league of nation. this was an international parliament in which countries gathered together and sat at the same table. there at the table they could diplom diplomatically iron out differences before they turned into wars. it was a noble notion. but to wilson it was rail politics. there was no reason not to do this and no reason it couldn't

happen. there was one reason it didn't, one primary reason. even though woodrow wilson went to paris to negotiate the peace and was gone for six months, and let me rephrase that, woodrow wilson was gone for six months. the president of the united states left from december in 1918 until july of 1919. he came home for one quick trip in between. but he came home with a treaty that wasn't perfect, but one thing above all, it incorporated this league of nation and he thought that would be able to iron out the laws in the treaty. here is the hitch: he was a constitutional scholar and no matter what the president wants to put in a treaty, that is

fine, but the senate has to ratify it. he return today a hostile, increasingly republican congress and they wanted nothing to do with it. they were determined not to accept anything he came home with. and that was the case. i don't want to deminish the genuine belief people had this wasn't a good treaty or a good idea to have a league of nation because it had a notion of collective security. if there was a violation against one nation, all of us would chip in and fight it. that is something we argue about to this day whenever we mobilize. so wilson realizing he was

getting nowhere with the senate, i think embarked on the greatest political mission any president has undergone. here was a president who decided he was going to take his cause -- this idea of the league of nation, and bring it to the people. he launched on a 29-city tour around the country. this was really the first time a president toured the country, sold himself, but not for personal reasons. his was somebody who sacrificed his life to sell the people on an idea. or as wilson just corrected me on an ideal. that is what he believed in and wanted the country to buy into.

as is rather famous now and something i track in great detail, wilson collapsed in the middle of the tour. he suffered a stroke days later and began what i called the greatest conspiracy in whitehouse history. the second mrs. wilson, the first one dying in the first year in office and breaking the president's heart. he suffered a major depression. got out of bed to fight the war and win the peace. but in 1919, late 1919, the second mrs. wilson and a handful of doctors conspired to keep

from the world the fact the president of the united states suffered a stroke. and for the last year and a half of woodrow wilson's second term, no body saw the president of the united states. and indeed, every document that entered the whitehouse and needed presidential approval, every decision, every person who might be granted an audience, had to pass through mrs. wilson who had been a young attractive widow here in town whose family ran a jewelry store. very little political experience and education, but edith wilson was the first president of the united states. she was acting at least as a chief of staff. but i would say

>> 's we really didn't know the extent of the lions than that he was walking into. there were a lot of instances where he was quite savvy and aware of what they were doing. so here was the big problem that wilson encountered in paris. they are sitting at the table where 24 other nations are. and those to other nations had a

very specific agenda and wilson then arrived and he didn't have those things. he was not there to build an empire. he was there with one national goal. and that goal was a part of this. so as a result and the part of that, that could've been the most quixotic thing. and some may say the dumbest thing that he really didn't go in with a badge. but maybe we should have controlled more of the law that way. and we didn't conceive it that way. but i think in the end, i think that at the very least you will see the spirit of them and i would say nine out of 14 points, the essence of them in the real facts of them are there. and so it is a fair question.

what will probably be debated forever. what do you think of the autobiography of thomas marshall was wilson's vice president? >> this is a fascinating question. thomas martel, who is from indiana, a great favorite son of indiana, in fact. let me answer the question about the autobiography. if you read his autobiography, his name only appears a handful of times, which is kind of interesting for the vice president. and at the same time he was seldom in the white house and the wilson years. and now i am just bragging. and i knew that for the last 10 years of her life, i used to go up to her on massachusetts

avenue where she would say, pointlessly, something more important. and she loved having me over because i loved woodrow wilson. he sees entrance usages ridicule me for two hours. i was in my early 20s and she was in her early '80s at that point. and i was just kind of this mouse. but she was -- he said she claimed it so assertively that i know it is not true. but it is a great story. which she claims that when they finally did break it to the vice president weeks later, that the president had suffered a stroke and that he fainted. and he was probably ill equipped. and yes. and this goes back to why call it a conspiracy and they might

not have risen to something that they knew that they could write to. and this was a decision arbitrarily made by mrs. wilson and the doctor. and as a result in large measure of all that, we now have a 25th amendment to the constitution. >> is product not only of the south, but of the deep south. during an era when they are in the ascendancy of politics. ..

>> he was an racist that being

said i don't think he was a veer lant racist if we can have grades of racism. his real feelings about sugration was he believed the country wasn't ready to integrate. he had it will take a generation or two before this country can deal with that problem. which would put you somewhere in the mid-1950s. that being said, did he show the process? probably a good bet. and i would say he didn't want the revolution that did occur in the '50s and '60s to occur on

his watch. and i will through in another political point, and we must end it here, it was this point that wilson realized he needed the complete backing of the democratic party that included the vast block of one third of the senate and congress which were southern democrats. he remained true to them, the southern cause and got his new freedom. it was passed on the back of the african-american in this country. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> more booktv coming up talk with the book on margaret